


Marrow in Flames

by reserve



Category: Orange is the New Black
Genre: Coercion, F/F, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Mental Breakdown, Non-Graphic Violence, Self-Harm, Toxic Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 16:27:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1096099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reserve/pseuds/reserve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They call me crazy eyes, I have a troubled mind / And a cardboard sign and a jug of wine / but I'll be alri-i-ight, if I can make it through the niiii-ii-ii-ight</p>
            </blockquote>





	Marrow in Flames

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sharksdontsleep](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sharksdontsleep/gifts).



> Hi! I want to tell you straight off the bat that if this story doesn't work for you I will write you a new one before the reveal! That said, I hope you enjoy this slice of Crazy Eyes' brain; I know it's dark, but it made a lot of sense to me as I was writing.

The first time it happens, she’s sixteen.

It’s mid-June in Park Slope, and the classrooms at Berkeley Carroll are hot. So hot inside the walls that she can feel it her very bones. She swears later that her bones were on fire, just burning her up from inside. The very marrow: aflame, like a grease fire in her body. That’s what she tells them afterward.

One moment, she’s tapping her pencil on her desk and the next she’s at the windowsill and she swears, swears she’d going to jump down onto the sidewalk and get into that big lake in the park. She swears she’s going to run the full length of that park and get right into that lake and cool her bones down.

Everyone starts shouting _Suzanne._

_Suzanne, get down!_

_Suzanne what are you doing??_

She looks back for one final second and then she leaps right out the window and crushes at least some of her hot bones against the sidewalk.

That’s when it begins.

\--

First come the doctors. An unholy surfeit of doctors and everyone single one wants to know what she was feeling, and so she tells them, frankly, with certainty: my bones were on fire.

Her parents, Charlie and Olivia, fret beside her bed, where they have her strapped down right now (“it’s only temporary, darling”).  

Olive wrings her hands, and clutches the rail of her bed where the straps connect.

“Mom, I am fine,” she says. “They put the fire out for me.” 

Her mother strokes her brow. Her hair is still long, and braided. They haven’t cut it and bound it up to keep her safe yet. A little too much _Propheria’s Lover_ is a bad thing sometimes.

“I know, Suzie,” her mother sighs and oh, but she looks older than Suzanne has very seen her.

\-- 

The next time, she’s older. Maybe 18? She can’t remember. The meds make things run together. Meds to keep her cool, meds to keep her even, meds to snuff out the fire and to numb her and make her feel unreal but also realer. It’s _complicated._

This time, there’s a girl involved. And oh but she is lovely. She’s the closest thing to real fire that Suzanne has ever met and she’s the best kind of fire. Suzanne loves her. She straight up ELL OH VEE EES her and she feels warm inside her bones again, but this time it lingers instead of burning her up. 

Suzanne ‘s a student at NYU. That’s where Charlie teaches. Best to be close to dad, just in case.

Charlie is economics professor, but Suzanne. Suzanne’s an actress. 

This girl, let’s call her Aurora, is Columbian. She does slam poetry, and her accent just kills Suzanne. She’s the most interesting girl Suzanne has ever met, and Suzanne knows Aurora has no clue that she exists. Suzanne may as well be dust. So she starts to follow Aurora around. She swaps Latin class for Spanish. She watches slam poetry open mics all around the city. She watches and she watches and she watches. 

One day, she speaks. And to her, it sounds like the mewling of an angry cat. Her words come out so broken, and Aurora just stares like she’s _crazy. Like she’s just so crazy._ But Suzanne can’t stop yowling. The words just come and come, and then before Aurora can walk away, Suzanne is on her, holding her, trying to whisper in her perfect, multi-earringed ear, trying to smell her. 

The cops tell Olivia and Charlie that Aurora is pressing charges for attempted rape.

Suzanne cries for days. She cries and cries and cries. When they settle out of court, she cries in front of her lawyer, in front of her parents, and worst of all, in front of Aurora who looks at her with complete disgust as they take her from the room, and then away altogether.

 --

When she arrives at Litchfield, she is a ball of misery. Suzanne’s hair is so long that she can almost hang herself with it. And so she tries, and then they take her hair from her, too.

\-- 

After 18 months she’s out and back and home. Olivia and Charlie watch her like a hawk. They won’t let her get a job, and she goes to therapy three times a week: twice alone, and once at group. She likes group. Everyone is a little like her; everyone burns about something, even if they don’t call it burning.

She likes Edith best. Edith is small, and blonde, and she has big titties and Suzanne likes that.  She and Edith walk together after therapy each day and they talk about theatre and the latest _New Yorker_ issue, and how they both feel so wrong inside that there doesn’t seem to be a door out. 

“I have an idea,” Edith says one day. It’s October and the leaves are changing.

“Yeah, oh yeah?”

“Do you want to hear it?” Edith asks.

“Of course I do, baby,” says Suzanne, cool as hell to her girl. 

“I think,” Edith says slowly, “that if you hurt me I’ll get better.”

Suzanne looks at her.

“Will you do that for me?” Edith asks, plaintive and so sexy. 

“Ok,” Suzanne says.

They plan it out: Edith won’t get too hurt, but she’ll get hurt enough. 

Suzanne brings the electric carving knife and Edith gets big, plastic drop cloths to keep things from getting too messy. She takes all of her sedatives and lets Suzanne get to work.

She sings sonnets to herself the whole time, and Edith screams. 

When it’s over, when Edith barely whispers stop. Suzanne begins to weep and she doesn’t stop weeping and hitting herself until she’s back in Litchfield and she’s bound up there, with another surfeit of doctors and nurses and cops and Olivia and Charlie are nowhere to be found.

This time it seems like she’ll be in the Big House for a lot longer.

 --

At night, she mops. The cleaning is a mechanism of relief.

She never got to clean up Edith. She never got to wrap up that room into its plastic bedding and put it all away. Every time her brain feels dirty and rotten she’s cleaning up that room. Mopping away the blood and taking Edith into a warm, nice bath. 

At least, she concedes, dirt is better than fire. Even though she wishes she could burn.


End file.
